Issue #0535/2 - For small companies without professional IT management, Hewlett-Packard’s Easy Printer Care offers similar functionality to Web JetAdmin but on a smaller scale and in an easy to use format.
For the small company with a number of hard copy devices, but no in-house professional IT resource, Hewlett-Packard’s Easy Printer Care software provides central management of printers and MFPs with a range of monitoring and assistance functions.
Essentially a cut-down version of Web JetAdmin, Easy Printer Care is restricted to 15 devices and only manages Hewlett-Packard devices. In fact, those devices have to be Easy Printer Care compliant to achieve full functionality from the system.
Compliance was started with the Colour LaserJet 4700 and 4730mfp. All subsequent devices will be Easy Printer Care compliant. Some basic functionality will be available on most legacy Hewlett-Packard LaserJet and Colour LaserJet printers to include: printer discovery; basic printer status; basic support tools; together with basic supplies status and ordering.
Automatic discovery enables fast and easy installation for the non-professional maintainer of all compliant devices on the network.
Easy Printer Care provides that maintainer with simple reporting by user, printer, application or time and date. In addition, the system will report on colour and mono pages including tracking of colour printing. This provides the maintainer with a high level of information from which informed decisions can be made that allow the fleet to be managed, and future developments to be planned, in an effective manner.
Advanced reporting capabilities provide supplies status charts, information on the number of pages remaining in the installed supplies, supplies alerts and part numbers of the supplies that need to be ordered.
One of the best features for the small and medium business is the ability of Easy Printer Care to produce a consolidated view of supplies status so that the supplies purchasing process can be streamlined and administration costs minimised – as with Web JetAdmin.
For an amateur printer maintainer in a small company (where 40% of service calls are printer related!), one of the most frustrating jobs is responding to user difficulties and unscheduled maintenance situations – especially if that response has to be remote. Easy Printer Care includes troubleshooting help with links to Hewlett-Packard’s Instant Support system. This facility should allow the maintainer to solve many printing problems more easily and without unnecessary recourse to a service engineer.
This application is sure to be a real boon for small companies with modern Hewlett-Packard hard copy equipment.
Hewlett-Packard Easy Printer Care will be available for download from the hp.com web site in January 2006, although it is due to ship on-CD with the new Colour LaserJet 3000, 2600 and 3800 series printers.
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